Are we sure Spider-Man is that much faster than Cap? Both are faster than average humans, but, as far as I know, neither can catch bullets in their teeth...

As for the Spider-Sense, it doesn't make him psychic or able to dodge everything ever (again, he's only so fast). Otherwise, he'd never be injured. And he is...a lot.

"On paper," yes, Spider-Man should be able to beat Cap. On actual paper, it probably shouldn't happen.

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One of the things Shooter used to claim to hate in old Stan Lee stories was what we called the "Marvel adrenalin surge". That was seen in those instances where a character would, just for one moment, display a huge bust of strength far beyond his/her normal range. I was convinced that one of the reasons Shooter insisted on all those precise quantifications of power levels in OHOTMU -- something to which I strongly objected at the time -- was to make it extremely difficult to do those "surges" any more. If "it says here" that such-and-such a character can lift a maximum of 5 tons, then the more anal fanboys will go berzerk if a story is done in which the character exceeds that limit.

Labeling Spider-Man's strength level as "10 tons" struck me as a way of undoing one of the most famous "adrenalin surges" in the character's history.

Stan used to say Spider-Man had "the strength of ten men", which made his escape in that issue truly, well, amazing! But by establishing his strength level as 10 TONS, the scene becomes business as usual, and an "adrenalin surge" disappears RETROACTIVELY.

There is actually a fixed definition for "Strength of 10 men". In viking times, there was a measure called "man's strength", used to separate the men from the boys, that required a person to hold his arm out straight at a 90 degree angle from the body and have suspended from his hand a weight of about 10 kilograms or 20 pounds. For 2 men's strength and upwards the weight would be distributed to both arms.

So any man capable of lifting 50 kilograms (or 100 pounds) from each hand while holding his arms straight out from his body would have the strength of 10 men. I don't have the exact terms, since I read in a library book a long time ago, but presumably the vikings were not the only ones with this measurement.

It is something that is within the realm of what is possible for humans to achieve, but only barely.

(Black with blue hi-lites, which led him rather quickly down the path previously taken by his fellow X-Men, in their school uniforms, as well as Spider-Man and Batman.)

I'm a little late to this Spider-Man vs Cap party (been on the vacation) and I'm not going to add any fuel to that fire.  I merely have a question:  I have a fuzzy memory of Secret Wars (it was around the time my parents first bought comics off the spinners for me).  Did Spidey ever square off against Cap, or Cap-level foes during Secret Wars?  Or did he only square off against villians?

On a side note, I've never really been a fan of hero-on-hero violence.  Civil War was a big turn off.  And I suppose that's my problem with the current shenanigans in Fear Itself.  Not that it hasn't been done before.  Just not my tea cup, etcetrablah.  Now, villain-on-villain action? Bring it.

Hero on hero violence.

Like everything else in comics, It's all in the execution. (Old) Marvel had a great tradition of heroes knocking each other silly because of their personality quirks.

In Secret Wars, Spider-Man gave the X Men a slight thrashing during an escape. He and Cap never traded blows.